Two music videos featuring nubile, sweaty women writhing to a catchy tune arrived at the Boards offices recently. Superficially similar, they're diametrically opposed in their messages: male-fantasy femininity vs. strident feminism. The first, for Axe, trades on sex and comedy, framed in the context of a girl group to sell fragrances to young men. The second, for Nike, posits dance as an empowering feminist tool to sell clothes to young women. We spoke to the creatives involved in each to find out why they used the music video medium to express these ideas.

Briefed by Nike to launch a line of dance gear in Latin America, Madre, Buenos Aires dreamt up "Surgery". The spot shows a young woman in a hospital being prepped for elective plastic surgery. Changing her mind, she jumps up and starts to dance to a reggaeton beat through the hospital as fellow female patients sing to doctors to keep away from her bellybutton. The message: you don't need to go under the knife to lose weight, just dance.

"It was always a music video, never a spot," explains Madre creative Santiago Lucero, who penned "Surgery" with creative directors Carlos and Gabriel Bayala. "We had to sell a dance collection for women and we said if it is for that then we'll do a music video. We hadn't thought about a 60- or a 90-second spot, and when we tried to edit it to that it didn't work; it didn't have soul." It's a stunningly simple marriage of idea and execution, enhanced by a well-known cultural truth about the prevalence of plastic surgery in Argentina and a recognizable local music style.

Lucero adds that the medium helped them negotiate one important pitfall: "A spot could have been very preachy, saying what people have to do with their life, whereas this music video, although it's got a strong message, is much more relaxing." Aimed at young women, it's compelling feminist stuff that subverts stereotypes yet still manages to sell without being exploitative.

Exploitative is one charge that could easily be leveled at BBH, New York, although shrewd might be just as apt. Made to augment the TV spots of the same name, "Bomchickawahwah" begins with a girl on a bus. As she is passed by a guy wearing Axe, the scent, represented by three scantily clad girls, reaches her brain and drives her from her buttoned-down, sensible self to sexual abandon. Subtle, it isn't.

"What we were trying to do was make 'Bomchickawahwah' famous," says BBH, New York creative director Paul Bichler. "Digital-wise we were thinking, 'What's the best way to get that to stick in people's heads?' Songs very much stick in people's heads so it became a logical territory for us to explore." With an eye to Axe's demographic, the team hatched a music video, with the help of music house Mophonics, that would fulfill the twin big guns of viral advertising (and most young men's waking hours): sex and comedy. The result titillates viewers, but under the "safe" auspices of lampooning the semi-pornographic videos of bands like the notoriously racy Pussycat Dolls.

While "Surgery" uses a high-minded sincerity that is creatively ambitious and a more difficult sell than "Bomchickawahwah's" mix of lowest common denominator tricks, both employ a keen knowledge of their respective demographics. They're culturally astute truths and music styles that cleverly manipulate the medium to their brand's very differing messages.

Madre, Buenos Aires http://www.madrebuenosaires.com
BBH, New York http://www.bartleboglehegarty.com